First of all, if you see the message in this form then you are using a very much outdated version of our software. You should update your installation.

The message means that for some reasons the client installation (not you, not the user account, not the client version) is on our blacklist and cannot be used with our service anymore. The reason is that either one of the administrators or an automated system has seen unacceptable activity from a specific client installation (i.e. a specific PC) and wants to make sure that simply registering a new user account won't get the culprit access again. You should be able to judge for yourself if the person in question is you or not. The most popular reasons for getting on our blacklist are: sending SPAM, making fraudulent payments on our web site or on others, and committing all kinds of vandalism. It's not difficult to tell whether we actually meant you (your particular user account) or not: if we did, your account will be disabled and you won't be able to log in anymore, i.e. you never see this message. :-)

In most cases, our servers are able to identify each client installation uniquely (they only use this ability for the blacklist, nothing else). But unfortunately some installations cannot be told apart when they connect with older YF client versions. This is the case for practically all YF client versions before 20090826-01, especially for those released between March and April 2009.

So the simple and most effective solution is: remove your outdated YF client installation and install the most current version. We cannot solve the problem for you, you need to solve it yourself.

First of all it means that you client installation is outdated, because otherwise you should see a human readable message instead and wouldn't ask this question in the first place, so please update your client installation.

Second, it means that you have exceeded the usage time limits of the FreeFreedom account. This account type is limited in usage time. Please note that multiple accounts used by the same person count as one -- the servers notice this.

There are two ways you can solve this. Either wait until both limits are no longer exceeded (we recalculate these values only twice a day if the limits have been exceeded, but every few minutes if not -- for technical reasons), or consider buying a BasicFreedom package or using BasicFreedom vouchers. Each time you buy a package or send a voucher all recorded usage time for this account gets deleted. If you need a working Your Freedom account to access our web page, use username "unregistered" and password "unregistered"; it only provides access to our web page and only through the web proxy feature.

Please understand that while we certainly want to maintain a free service for everyone we've got bills to pay -- servers cost money and employees want a paycheck every month. No-one gets filthy rich with Your Freedom.

Well, what does it sound like? :-) Your YF client installation is too old and you should upgrade to a current version, please see our download section. (In fact it's so old it cannot even display the text properly.) Once you've upgraded your YF client installation the message should go away -- if it doesn't you've tried to upgrade one of the installer types with the other. Best thing is you uninstall the YF client first, then install the new version. Your configuration is not lost if you choose to keep your settings (small installer version).

It's in your "home directory" and it's called ".ems.cfg" (yes, two dots). Now where is your "home directory"?

With Unix like systems you probably know because you are there all the time. In most cases there is a directory called "/home" containing a subdirectory for each user, by his or her username -- you should find your "home directory" there. The config file ".ems.cfg" is in there, you just might not see it because it's a "hidden" file in Unix terminology, starting with a dot. Try to append "-a" to the "ls" command.

With Windows, open an Explorer and go to "C:\Documents and Settings" (or the equivalent in your language). In there, there is a directory for each user; the directory name is usually equivalent to your login name. This directory is your "home directory", or "%HOMEPATH%" in Windows environment terms, and the config file ".ems.cfg" is in there.

If you want to copy the file or edit it, be sure that the Your Freedom client is not running! The file is plaintext and you may edit it with your favourite text editor (for example, pico or vi on Unix systems, or notepad in Windows).

We may have asked you to add a "hidden configuration command" in there -- it's "hidden" because you can't see it in the YF client itself. In this case, just add it as a separate line anywhere in the config file.

You need to generate enough application traffic to saturate the link between the Your Freedom client and the Your Freedom server -- in both directions. So either run an application of which you know that it will use the full bandwidth, or use Your Freedom's built-in traffic generator.
The traffic generator has been implemented in release 20070622-02, it only works if both server and client run versions equal or above this version. In order to use it, start the client and create a local port forward from some port (e.g. 1234) to a virtual host called "speedtest" on port 0. Then open a command shell (in Windows, click on "Start", choose "Run", then type "cmd"). In this shell, type "telnet localhost 1234" (or whatever port you've used) -- the speed test will then run for one minute, at the highest speed possible.
Note that during the speed test, all speed restrictions still apply. You won't get a higher bandwidth reading than your profile or slider settings permit, but you should see the bandwidth go up to your slider settings -- if you don't, something else is limiting your speed. It could be (and likely is) the speed of your Internet connection. Try adjusting the uplink speed to the actual speed of your Internet connection (e.g. many DSL connections only allow 256 kbit/s or 384 kbit/s in uplink direction; adjust the slider slightly below this value), this might improve your throughput in the opposite direction.
Please note: This traffic generator feature is meant to be used for troubleshooting; please do not use it frequently. The best reason to run a speed test is that we've asked you to!

Sure! We include a link in the payment confirmation we send via email. Make sure your user account information is up to date, then click on the link (modify the data until you like the result).
If you require an invoice for an older payment or you don't have the link, just email payments@your-freedom.net, tell us the transaction ID (or at least your username!) and we'll send you the link or a PDF.

The simple truth behind these restrictions is: they are there to cause discomfort. While we do believe that a fundamental service should be available at no cost to everyone, our ISPs and employees expect to get paid. We cannot pay for the servers and the work if we don't sell any packages and vouchers.

Please consider buying a BasicFreedom package or a voucher carnet to instantly remove all the time restrictions and loosen the others. It helps us keeping the service alive, and it helps you not to pull your last hairs.

By the way: it's useless to create accounts by the dozen to avoid these restrictions. It won't work. Our systems notice automatically and treat them as one.

Can I send you a money order/bank transfer in another currency than Euros?

We know that your bank will probably charge a lot for orders/transfers in other currencies than your own -- that's why services like PayPal are so popular. It is therefore only natural to ask this question. But you need to understand that the same happens the other way round: if we receive an order or transfer in another currency than Euros our bank will have to process it through a third party bank and the fees for this service will be up to 20 Euros.

Please be considerate. If you intend to buy one of the long-term packages that is significantly more expensive than 15-20 Euros it's OK if you use your currency. But we reserve the right to shorten the package runtime in blatant cases.

What would you say if you were a landlord of a pub who would offer several kinds of beers (and free tap water) and would offer everyone to try some free pints so they can figure out which is their favourite, and some just "weren't sure" every night? How long would you stay courteous to them? What would you do if they started to disguise themselves differently every night so you wouldn't notice, but you would notice at some point? You would probably argue with the first few, laugh at the next dozen, but then you would only feel depressed and sorry about the state of the world and drink all your beer yourself.

Test drives are not for extended use, they are for trying out. When we introduced them we thought that we could rely on the honesty of our users. A few days later we had to introduce the first limitation and restrict the number of test drives per account. Then people started to create accounts like there was no tomorrow so we had to make them wait 3 days. So people started to create accounts in advance and we had to do something against this as well. Soon they'll figure out what it is and then we'll probably have to abandon self-service test drives altogether. It's a shame.

We can only appeal to our users to take this into consideration. Someone has to pay for your use, and they are the honest ones.

The procedure to create the dump (dump.log) varies with the sort of YF distributable you have and the operating system you are using. This instruction is valid from client version 20080422-01, not for earlier versions.

Windows:

Zipped JAR: Open a command prompt, cd to the directory to which you've extracted the ZIP file. Then run this command:java -jar freedom.jar --dump

Mac OS X: Currently there is no simple provision for creating a dump. You need to follow the Unix instructions.

Unix like OS's: cd to the directory where the contents of the ZIP file are. Then typejava -jar freedom.jar --dump

In either case, the YF client will open. Please reproduce your problem, then terminate the YF client. Locate the resulting dump.log file on your Desktop (Windows and Mac OS X) or in your home directory, compress it (preferrably with a non-proprietary algorithm) and mail it to us at support@your-freedom.net along with a description of your problem and your username.
Note that a dump is not the same as the message log that you can save from the Messages panel! It contains a lot more information. Message logs will only help us in very simple cases.

My download speed via YF is inconsistent. How can I determine if this problem is caused by my local network or the YF servers?

Check the messages log. Are you seeing a lot of disconnects and reconnects? If you are not using the CGI connection method, you shouldn't. Many disconnects indicate that there is a problem with the connection between you and the Your Freedom server you are using. Try using another server.

Configure an "RTT interval" of, for example, 2000 milliseconds. This only produces very little overhead and can be kept in the config. You'll see the round trip time figures in the message log. An unloaded connection should be well below 200 milliseconds if you are using one of the binary protocols (HTTPS, FTP, UDP), below 500 milliseconds for HTTP and below 2000 milliseconds for CGI. More important than the absolute value is that it does not vary too much over time (for CGI, some amount of variation is normal). If there is a lot of variation and possibly long round trip times, this is an indication that something is going on between you and the Your Freedom server you are using. If it's the same with all the servers, the problem is likely close to you.

Check out the server stats page; is the server you are using heavily loaded? Unless it is pushing several megabytes of traffic per second and/or the load figure is above 100,000 the server should be fine. For example, the servers in France are known to be able to push 9 megabytes per second without problems. Less than 2 megabytes per second is almost nothing, unless the load figure is high (indicating that the server is somewhat in trouble and trying to coerce clients to use another server).

Do a traceroute (or tracert on Windows) for your YF server of choice (e.g. ems01.your-freedom.de):

traceroute (unix) /tracert (windows) is a tool that shows you the network path between two locations. It shows you the address and how long it takes to get to each hop in the path. When there is a problem with the network, traceroute can often be used to narrow down where the problem is occurring. If round trip times build up quickly the problem is near you, not us. If you lose packets, the problem is likely network related.
There is a graphical frontend for tracert called WinMTR (http://winmtr.sourceforge.net/) which allows you to run multiple traceroutes and to do some statistics on the best/worst/average ping times. This tool is free software and has been released under the GNU General Public License.

No, this is not possible. We cannot assign the "sexy" port numbers to users for the obvious reason that everybody wants them. We have therefore decided that every users eligible for server ports gets them assigned automatically and randomly. Even with these random server port numbers it is possible to use a vast majority of applications that benefit from server ports, including many popular P2P clients.

With some proxies it's possible to obscure the actual server names by converting their IP addresses to DWORD format. One particular interesting thing with DWORD addresses is that you can add to this DWORD number any multiple of 4294967296 (256^4) - and it will still work. So, even if one DWORD server address is blocked, you can still get a "new" one just by adding 4294967296. For conversion purposes you can use the Windows calculator (in scientific mode) or specific websites like http://www.allredroster.com/iptodec.htm.

Example: The IP address of your YF server is: W.X.Y.Z . Then you can determine the DWORD equivalent of the IP format like this:W * 256 + X = * 256 + Y = * 256 + Z =(Add any multiple of 4294967296 to the result and it will still work.)

I got some problems with java. YF doesn't want to come up from the start menu. And when i doubleclick on it, it won't open.

Recent java runtime environment ("JRE") versions have a problem with Windows XP styles or desktop styles / themes in general. Please try with Windows classic theme (like for Win2k) and see if it works.

For eg , lets say that your proxy doesnot allow any irc connections, and you want to chat with your friend in some channel in Efnet IRC network. So you make a local port forward in Your-Freedom say 2222 to any irc host say,

Local Port : 2222

Remote Host : irc.efnet.net

Remote Port : 6667

Now connect to localhost:2222 in your irc client and you'll be connected to efnet irc network.

I hope that'll clear up the doubt a little bit and as you can see local port forwarding is of no use in p2p applications.

For more info : you may "google" for "ssh port forwarding", which is somewhat similar to this but the basic idea is same for both

As you know, the YF client does provide a local Socks and HTTP/HTTPS Proxy on your machine.Now if your Profile supports relaying and you turned on the feature in the YF Client (YF Client -&gt; Ports -&gt; Relay conncections) then not only can use these Proxies on your local machine, butalso the other people connected to the same network.They can use the YF client on your computer by specifiying your machine's IP address as the proxy address.

Typical use is for roommates in a dorm, collegues in the same office....

Well, as Server Port Forward is the opposite of the local Port Forwards. A SPF will "permanently (i.e. as long as the YF client is connected) forward a port from our server to your machine.

For example if we have allocated you Port 10000 (YF client -&gt; Profile Tab -&gt; Forwarded Server Ports) and you are connected to ems02.your-freedom.de, then it means that if somebody connecting to ems02.your-freedom.de Port 10000, this would initiate a connection to your PC. - Don't worry, these connections get only allowed if you did set your Client up to do so -

You don't need this feature unless you know what it is good for. People use it for remote desktop connections and the like.

Please be aware that we block HTTP so you won't be able to make your local web server available on the Internet this way. We just cannot risk having to take responsibility for what you host.

NOTE: Server Port Forwards are only included in the TOTAL account type.

The most likely reason is that you mis-spelt your username or password, of course. But there are other explanations as well.

The YF servers have local authentication databases, they do not verify your login against a remote server. This means that the database needs to be sync'd between the servers, and the means for this is a built-in transportation mechanism we call the "Messenger". It uses a flooding mechanism where servers pass information on to their peers in order to overcome reachability problems. It is obvious that we cannot flood the whole database every minute, but there is a regression algorithm that send new or freshly changed acount information more often than old, static account information. This should ensure that the server databases are up-to-date within several minutes of a change.

So much for theory. In practice, every software has bugs, and when the Messenger mechanism fails the databases can get out of sync. The most likely reason at the moment for such a failure is that too many threads are running and their stack segment can no longer be mapped into the memory frame. If that sounds like quibberish to you then you've never written a large-scale Java application. :-) This will be solved once the service is partially commercia; we will be able to afford more servers then.

We do support UDP as defined in the Sock5 RFP, which usually works with Dante (soksify) under Linux brilliantly and also works fine with Sockscap.However saying that, the UDP support for Socks is pretty broken by design so only a limited amount of applications can make sensible use of that.

I think my ISP/employer has blocked the connection to your servers? What can I do?

First thing to do is test if your ISP or employer actually blocks you or not. Point your browser at http://ems.your-freedom.de/info.txt. If you see a status page indicating the server name, the uptime, the country and a lot of other things then our servers are not entirely blocked and you should at least be able to use HTTP connection mode. Go to the configuration panel of YF and choose http connection mode, ensuring that the port is now set to 80. Ensure you have ems.your-freedom.de configured as the server (and while we are at it, please also enable "automatic server selection"). Then save the settings and try to connect.

If that does not work but you are able to see the status page, look out for "Alternative" lines. They contain IP addresses. Choose one of them and use it as the initial server to connect to. Also check the "avoid DNS" checkbox. Save the settings and try this. If that makes it work, try to revert to https connection method (use port 443).

All this failing, you will need more knowledge about your ISP's or employer's network. If ports are open for external connections, these can be used to connect to our servers (eg. some employer may choose to open the "telnet" port 23 to the outside). If you know that such a port is open in your network, try if you can get a connection by not using any proxy configuration and using this port with the https connection method (no use in trying http. If you are sure that the port is open and our servers are not yet listening on that port, just tell us about it and we will make the servers listen on that port as well, that's just a matter of seconds. Currently open ports that can be used with the https connection method: 23, 25, 443, 445, 1080, 1863, 5190 and 8080. Currently open ports that can be used with the http connection method: 80.

If you would like us to help with your problem, please ensure that when sending an email to us you include at least your username, a saved messages log (see the Messages panel, there is a save button there) of a failed connection, and a copy of your current configuration file (can be found in your home directory, eg. on Windows, that's C:\Documents and Settings\your user name), .ems.cfg (note the dot at the beginning). Send you mail to info@your-freedom.net.

If you want to do even better and give us the best chance of helping you, use the dump feature. With the Windows installer version, this is an option in the Start menu (it produces a dump file in the installation directory); in case of the Java version, use the --dump=dump.log command line switch. This file contains all information from the messages log and also copies of all communication, all proxy replies etc. Just have a look if you like. Oh, and btw., it certainly can't hurt to zip or otherwise compress this file before you send it to us!

I did not receive the promised registration mail with my Password via eMail.

Here are the most common causes and what you can do:

The eMail account you provided is out of space:

Mainly from the Mail Providers like Hotmail, Yahoo, GMX we get quite a few eMail bounces because the Users mailbox exceeds the Quota (so you would need to clear your Mailbox).After such a bounce YF will NOT resend the eMail automatically.

Fundamentally the Client is written in JAVA, so it should work on all platforms which do support the Java 1.5 or newer JRE.

It has definitely been tested with:

Microsoft Windows 98, NT, 2000, XP, Vista

Linux

Mac OS X

For Windows and Mac OS X there is an Installer package available, for all other systems you need to download the Zip-file and execute the JAR version of your Freedom.

With many Linux distributions you need to make sure that the Sun JRE is being used and not the GNU JRE. Because of licensing issues the GNU people have to re-write the entire Swing stuff that provides the interface to the operating system's GUI, and that's a ridiculous task because of Swing's "features" (some call them "bugs").